


Settled

by r_lee



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-30 23:50:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r_lee/pseuds/r_lee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lee on the Pegasus in the year before the Cylon occupation. (Full-series spoilers.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Settled

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [anythingbutblue](http://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutblue) for the prompt and for urging me to finally write something for Lee.

This was not the life he'd have chosen for himself. This was not the life he wanted, nothing like the life he wanted. He'd been just fine before being invited to the decommissioning ceremony. Galactica? As a Viper pilot it would be an honor to fly in it, but when the honor was for his father, the man he hadn't had a decent conversation with in years? Really? Protocol demanded his participation, but all he wanted to do was get in and out as quickly as possible. Do the thing requested of him, then get the frak out of there as fast as he could. Nice, easy, clean, and neat. There were too many ghosts to convince him to linger.

He knew before he got there that Kara was on Galactica, and she was the _last_ person he'd wanted to see. Nothing but trouble: he told Zak that, after their ill-fated dinner. Said _that Kara, she's something else. You'd better watch out for her. She's walking trouble if I've ever seen it._ But Zak, good-natured naive motherfrakker that he was, only laughed and said _I told you, keep your hands off my girlfriend, nothing you say will convince me to let go of this one. She's a keeper, Lee, and she's mine. I'm crazy about her._ Faced with that, who could blame him for putting as much distance between himself and his frakked-up family as possible?

Why did every frakking thing in his life have to revolve around Kara frakking Thrace? Why was she such a godsdamn thorn in his side? Why did the old man treat her like a daughter? Why couldn't he see that she was poison? Why didn't he know what a frakking mess Kara made of their entire family? Why couldn't highly-decorated Admiral Adama see that letting Kara Thrace take a place at the table — any table — was always going to be the death of the situation?

Oh, face it, he told himself from the comfort of his quarters on the Pegasus, why can't _you_ learn that same frakking lesson?

He loved Dee, he really did. But when he was honest with himself, he knew he only loved her like someone loves the second-best puppy in the bunch. They were still adorable and loyal and beautiful and fun. They could still do everything the first preferred puppy did, and just as well, but somehow no matter how hard they tried they never did it with quite as much shine, quite as much gusto. Over time a person could grow to love the second-choice puppy with a reverent devotion; over time they could convince themselves that the first-choice one that went to a different home was happier that way, doing whatever they did with their new people, and that the second puppy was actually so much better. But deep down inside, he still knew his heart burned with a dangerous flare for that first choice, that elusive one that got away, the one he'd been so close to having, the one he'd talked himself into believing was his by gods-given right. Maybe he thought fate owed him Kara after all their family had been through.

Maybe, he came to realize unhappily, he was _Kara's_ second-choice puppy. He was definitely Dee's first choice, and he felt pretty miserable about not being able to accord her the same status. He knew exactly what he was doing the day after the groundbreaking ceremony when he asked Dee to marry him. He was running toward someone who had the potential to love him unconditionally, to forgive him for his past, for all his sins and transgressions. Someone who wanted him the way he was, someone who overlooked his warts and flaws and impetuousness and recklessness. Someone willing to overlook the fact that his heart would never belong to her. It was a cruel thing to do to anyone. It was a cruel thing to do to someone who loved him, to someone he professed to love. He did and he didn't. He loved Dee for who she was, but he resented her for who she wasn't. She looked up at him with those beautiful hazel eyes of hers, but every time she did, he thought those were the wrong hazel eyes. Every time she smiled, every time she touched him, every time they took to their bed together, no matter how great it felt, he knew it was wrong. And he was too godsdamn selfish to admit it because after all he'd been through and after the way Kara had treated him, he deserved a little happiness, didn't he? She was off having her fun with Sam — he never had anything against Sam other than the fact he didn't belong in the picture — so didn't that mean he was due to be off having his own fun with Dee?

 _You aren't still frakking Dualla, are you?_ Frak you, Kara Thrace, frak **you.**

He was Commander Lee Adama, and he ran the Pegasus. He liked to think he was respected and somewhat admired by the crew, different though he was from Admiral Cain. They'd gotten away with a lot of godsdamn nonsense on this ship under her leadership, but they all tacitly agreed that it was a time of great stress, a time of need for survival, and that in war, anything and everything goes. Whatever it takes to survive. With the bulk of the fleet living on New Caprica, there wasn't much to manage on the Pegasus. They ran the ship in bare-bones mode, just like his father did with Galactica, and he resigned himself to the life he had, the comforts of the Commander's quarters, the loving and ever-chafing ministrations of the wife he was stuck with. He loved her in theory, but he didn't really love her in practice. It was a perfect recipe for disaster in the making and he knew it and Dee knew it — she wasn't stupid — but it was the status quo. They settled. They all settled.

*

While the colonists on New Caprica worked their asses off to make a go of it, those who were left defending the skies (defending against what? what a frakking laugh) lived in the austere but tangible comfort of their respective ships. Galactica and Pegasus provided planetary defense against nothing: the nebula's radiation protected them from detection by the Cylons. The skeleton crews grew lazy and complacent. He didn't see much point in maintaining the same strict regimen they'd had before the Cylons left. Every day took on a routine sameness, and he grew lazy and complacent along with his crew. _You're gaining weight,_ Dee admonished six idle and bitter months into the thing. He told her it was because he was finally content, but really, it was because he was miserably confined. Sitting still never suited him; he was a man of action. Up here there was nowhere to go: his father was Admiral, and after Commander that's all there was. No room for advancement, and as Commander he didn't fly CAPs. He resented the way Dee looked at him like he was still someone special, that she still, after all this time, had stars in her eyes for him although the stars were nowhere as sparkly as they had been at first. Despite it all she was loyal in a fierce and possessive way that didn't mesh with how resigned she seemed to be around him most of the time. What are we doing here, he wanted to ask her every time she looked up at him with those second-choice puppy-dog eyes of hers, but he could never bring himself to do it. Mostly because he didn't want to hear the answer and anyway, he knew the answer. They were playing house, pretending. She was in love with him and he wasn't in love with her, although he told himself he was in his own way.

He lied and told himself he loved his wife. There were days he convinced himself he really did, that Kara was in the past. That he didn't boil over with jealousy every time he thought of her married to Anders (nice guy, nice guy, but Pyramid Boy was _definitely_ no Viper pilot, not even in the same league). There were days he convinced himself Dee was feeding him too much on purpose, so he'd be less attractive to Kara or any potential other Karas. There were days he felt caught by her, like some animal she'd netted and declawed and tamed.

Then there were days he knew everything he did, every last thing, was a trap of his own making. He was the one who'd moved in on his brother's girl. He was the one who'd cut himself off from family. He was the one who'd done all the wrong things that night at Zak and Kara's dinner party.

But Kara had helped. She was always quick to help herself to what felt good, what felt right, what was fun, and frak the consequences. She was the one who said it was time for shots. She was the one who said you and me, table, right here, right now.

The problem was that he should have been the bigger of the two of them. He should have upheld his own strict and lofty ideals, the ones he'd learned from his grandfather way back when he was little and interested in the law. He should have held himself to his own standards but he hadn't, or almost hadn't, and that was his downfall. Everything since then? A long slow slide down a slippery slope, and no matter how he tried, there was nowhere to keep going but down, down, down. And he hated every last minute of the ride.


End file.
